Ravi Bopara has put up another great performance for his county Essex in the ongoing Natwest T20 blast competition. He played a brilliant inning of 66 against Gloucestershire in a South Division match yesterday and guided his team to an easy victory.
Winning the toss, the Essex captain, Ryan Ten Doeschate, elected to field first as most captains like to do these days in the shortest form.
Doeschate’s decision was backed by his bowlers who showed exit door to the three opposition players inside the first seven overs.
A couple of decent partnerships got built after that though, first between Hamish Marshall and Benny Howell for the 4th wicket and then, between Marshall and Cameron Herring for the 6th wicket which gave some respectability to the Gloucestershire’s score.
The Eagles had to chase down 163 and their start was pretty decent. Mark Pettini and Jesse Ryder got boundaries early on. However, both of them got out in a short time span which helped Gloucestershire pull things back a little bit, but, the third wicket partnership between Tom Westley and Bopara just took the match completely away from them.
Bopara thumped the Gloucestershire bowlers brutally. He faced just 39 balls during his inning and hit 6 sixes to go with his 2 fours.
This was Bopara’s second consecutive big performance for Essex. He had played a wonderful knock in the previous game as well for them.
The way Bopara is performing at no. 4 for Essex, the England team management might give him a promotion in the batting order in the next series of limited-over matches. Currently, the 29-year old right handed batsman plays in the lower middle order for his national side and does the job of a finisher.
It’s actually because of his capability of hitting big sixes that he is used so low in the order by England.